Online recruiting management sites are venues for parties who offer opportunities and parties who search for opportunities to present what they have and find what they seek. Parties who offer opportunities include, among others, any kind of employers, executive recruiters (a.k.a. “head hunters”), or recruiting agents. The opportunities that they offer may be for employment, types of services, or other types of positions, such as military, charity, or volunteer recruitment. Parties that recruit for available positions or for providing a service shall be referred hereinafter as “recruiters.” Parties who search for opportunities on the recruiting management sites will be referred hereinafter as “candidates.” On the recruiting management sites, candidates for employment may search for available positions posted by recruiters. The employment candidates also have the opportunity to post their own resumes, names of reference providers, and other personal information for recruiters to view and assess their qualifications.
Some recruitment sites are also set up to automatically send alert email messages to registered candidates of new positions that satisfy the criteria chosen by the candidates or which match the profiles of the candidates. Similarly, on these recruitment management sites, recruiters post available positions for employment candidates to view. They also use the sites to search for candidates whose resumes or profiles have qualifications that fit what they are looking for. On some sites, recruiters may also set up automated alerts such that when a candidate with a specific profile that matches what the recruiters are looking for joins the site, the recruiters will be notified. After the recruiters have found suitable candidates from the sites, they can contact the candidates to set up interviews.
After the interviews, the recruiters will narrow down the number of candidates to a few for employment considerations. The recruiters also often contact the reference providers provided by the candidates to assess the candidates' characters and qualifications. They can contact the reference providers by phone, fax or email. Sometimes the recruiters may not be able to communicate with the reference providers because either the phone numbers or email addresses are inaccurate. Other times it may take the recruiters several attempts to get a hold of the reference providers. Moreover, the recruiters' interviews with different reference providers may not be consistent because the recruiters may not ask the same questions to all reference providers. Finally, after each interview, the recruiters may have to write a report of the interview; the reports may not accurately reflect what the reference providers have communicated. After going through all the steps to obtain a reference report on all candidates, the recruiters will feel that the reference checking process is time consuming, inconvenient and sometimes frustrating.
Furthermore, the reference checking process is done very late in the hiring process, which is typically at the time the employers are about to hire a certain candidate. If, through the interviews with the reference providers, the employers uncover some aspects of the candidate that they do not like, they may have to go back to the candidate pool to choose another employment candidate and check that candidate's reference providers. That process, again, delays the hiring process and is inconvenient to the recruiters. Ideally, reference checking should be done early in the hiring process, such as during the initial screening and selection period.
Currently there is no recruitment system that allows recruiters to conveniently view a candidate's profile and instantly view reference data, such as evaluations, from the reference providers of the candidate. U.S. Pat. No. 6,904,407 (“Ritzel”) discloses an online repository service for a candidate's reference providers to store their reference data. However, recruiters may not find Ritzel very convenient for the following reasons. In Ritzel, a candidate's reference providers log into the repository website to enter the reference data, such as evaluations, about the candidate. The candidate who wants to provide reference data to a recruiter would refer the recruiter to the repository website with a personal account number. After the recruiter visits the website and logs in using the given account number, the recruiter is able to see a list of names of reference providers for the candidate. However, in order to read the evaluations, the recruiter must first click on the names of the reference providers and go through a purchasing process. After paying a fee and providing some personal information, the repository service sends the recruiter an email that contains the reference data. In order to read the reference data, the recruiter must access his email account and retrieve the email. In summary, the recruiter must go through many steps to be able to read the reference providers' reference data. The system, therefore, is not very convenient for recruiters because it does not allow recruiters to have a direct access to the reference data provided by the reference providers.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0033633 (“LaPasta”) discloses a method for evaluating job candidates. In LaPasta, the system sends emails to reference providers to complete survey questions regarding a job candidate. After receiving the answers from the reference providers, the system decouples the names from the data to ensure anonymity, combines the data from different reference providers together and generates a confidential data report for an employer to view. Therefore, with LaPasta, the employer is not able to see which reference provider says what about the candidate or to contact the reference provider directly for further data.
Accordingly, there is a need for a recruitment system that further cuts down the steps that a recruiter has to go through to read what reference providers say about a candidate and is integrated into the recruitment system. There is also a need for a recruitment system that allows the recruiter to see the name of a particular reference provider on the candidate's profile and be able to read exactly what that reference provider says about the candidate.
Another challenge facing online recruitment sites is in the marketing area of the sites. Recruitment sites want to have an impressive database with a great number of high quality candidates to attract potential employers. However, they generally rely on traditional marketing strategies such as online and offline advertising and public relations campaigns. These strategies are expensive. In addition, they generally indiscriminately attract a large number of unsuitable candidates to the site along with the suitable ones. The large number of unsuitable candidates not only represents a waste of advertising dollars but also makes it more difficult for employers to see and narrow in on the few that do actually qualify. Having a large number of unsuitable candidates actually diminishes the value of the sites and the online recruitment experience for recruiters.
Therefore, there is a need for a low-cost marketing method that attracts high quality and suitable candidates to a recruitment website.